In schools, psycho-education is a classroom behavior management method that aims at training teachers and students about children's emotional and behavioral problems. Psycho-educational teachers believe that social-emotional growth happens when children understand the role that emotions play in their school difficulties. Psycho-educational theory and methods include cognitive (thinking), affective (feelings), and behavior aspects.

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Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Helping Children Cope with Angry Thoughts and Feelings

Forman
(1993) defines coping skills, or coping efforts, as sets of information and
learned behaviors that children can use purposely to bring about positive
outcomes in potentially stressful situations. Coping techniques teach
psychological, social, cognitive, affective, and behavioral skills that
children and adolescents can use to deal with potential stressors. According to
the author, knowing and using coping skills can prevent or reduce a variety of
academic, emotional, behavioral, and health problems in children and
adolescents. On the other hand, the inability to handle potentially stressful
situations or stressors may result in emotional, behavioral, and/or physical
health problems. Coping skills are a way of promoting general, emotional, and
social competence in children, and we can divide them into two major
categories:

a)Problem-Focused.
Acting
on the stressful stimuli to change or to solve the problem. Using
problem-solving techniques, we focus the coping effort in managing or altering
the problem that is causing distress in the child.

b)Emotion-Focused. Managing how
the child perceives the situation and reacts to it (the emotional response) by
changing the way the child thinks about the stressor; cognitive procedures and
self-talking procedures are two examples of an emotion-focused coping effort.
For example, the child uses a coping technique like relaxation or selective
attention, focusing on the positive aspects of the situation while ignoring
the negative aspects of the event (Folkman and Lazarus, 1980).

When
we teach coping skills to a distraught child, we help the child move from a state
of anger and helplessness to a stage of problem resolution, or at least, a
better understanding of the troubling situation.

Recognizing Anger
Signals

As
an initial coping intervention, we can teach troubled and anger-prone children
to recognize when they feel angry. There are several ways of doing this. One
way is by paying attention to action
signals, or to what they are doing. The second way is by paying attention
to thought signals, or what they are
thinking, and the third way is by paying attention to feelings signals, or the way the child is feeling. Examples:

A
fourth way children can recognize anger is by paying attention to their body signals. We can train children in
identifying the body signals that cue them to anger; for example, face feels
hotter and flushes, body feels warmer and tensed, muscles tighten, faster and
shallow breathing, sweating, and heart pounding rapidly.

Anger Coping
Strategies for Children

When
we teach a child a game-like strategy, the child is more likely to use the
strategy than when we simply ask the child to follow a set of steps or rules.
We can teach children informal, and fun, anger coping strategies that they can
use when other children tease them and/or they feel frustrated. Some examples:

The
Turtle Technique. The child imitates a turtle when he is provoked,
retreating back into his shell; that is, lowering the head, and pulling the
arms and legs tightly to the body. The child cannot act aggressively when he is
in this position (Schneider and Dolnick, 1976).

Put
on a Happy Face. The
child simply smiles and acts happy. It is a lot harder to feel angry when we
are smiling.

The
Calm and Cool Technique. Teach the child to think of someone
that is always calm and cool; someone that the child truly likes. Then have the
child emulate the calmness and coolness of the hero. For example, imitating theterminator,
the child acts calm and cool.

The
Ally Technique.
This ally can be a real or an imaginary person, another “cool guy.” What this
ally will say and do when others tease him, when he is provoked, or when he
feels frustrated?

The
Superhero Technique. Spiderman, Wonder Woman, or another superhero is
with the child. The superhero gives support when the child feels troubled, and
congratulates the child when he manages to keep his anger under control. With
the superhero and ally techniques, the child is using his imagination to see
himself as better able to deal with frustrations.

The
Fogging Technique. The child downplays the importance of another
child’s taunting; for example: “Pinocchio!” “Yeah, yeah, I have a big nose. So
what?”

The
“Make a Promise to Change” Technique. The child promises that, for the
next hour, she will not get angry or throw a tantrum. After the hour, the
teacher or caregiver challenges the child to extend the promise for longer
periods; for example, for an extra hour, then for the whole morning, next for a
whole day, for two days in a row, and finally a whole week. The caregiver gives
a small reward to the child for each promise kept.

The
“Big C” Technique. The child makes a C with her thumb and index finger.
The C stands for “control.” The child looks at it and calms down. This is one
way for the child to cue herself.

The
Distraction Strategy. The child uses a distraction to angry thoughts and
feelings; for example, counting backwards, counting evens only or odds only,
skip counting, or reciting the timetables. Other ways that the child can
distract his attention are by focusing on a specific stimulus, visual or
auditory (e.g. singing a tune), or thinking about something funny. The child
can use a physical disruption like snapping a rubber band on his wrist or
pinching himself. Alternatively, the child can use a mental disruption or a
thought-stopping like, “Stop!” or “Cut it out.”

The
“Stop” Technique. Teach the child to say, “Stop!” to himself, first
aloud and later under his breath. Direct the child to write “stop” in big
colored letters on an index card that he can look at anytime, or teach the
child to imagine a stop sign coming down in front of him. Make sure the child
understands that “stop” means, “Stop doing it straight away” (Butler and Hope,
1995).

The
“Talking to Yourself” Strategy. The child can keep talking to herself to
calm down, or the child can recite self-calming statements.

The
Ignoring Technique. Teach the child to ignore the first and the second
ideas, thoughts, or responses that come to his mind. The child only responds to
his third idea or thought.

For the Teacher
or Caregiver:

Informal
and quick interventions that a teacher, a counselor, or a parent can try to
defuse angry feelings and acting-out behaviors in children are:

·Use
a planned shift in attention. For
example, you ignore the angry feelings or acting-out behavior, and then distracting
the child by interesting her in doing something else.

·Ask
the child to do something else, such as going for a walk, playing a board game,
playing basketball, reading (or listening to) a short story, or coloring.

·If
the child is angry with another child, convince the angry child to be “extra nice”
to the other child.

·If
the child is angry with another child, have the angry child recall positive
experiences she had with the other child, until she stops feeling angry.

·Reinforce
a competing response. Give the
anger-prone child positive attention, such as praise, privileges, or
recognition when she behaves in ways incompatible with angry feelings and
acting-out behaviors. For example, praising the child when she is acting calm,
when apologizing or saying “thank you,” or when sharing materials with other
children.

·Use
the restitution technique; for
example, you might say, “If you wronged _____, you must do something good for
him.” This technique can go both ways, asking both the anger-prone student and the other child to, daily, do at
least one positive thing for each other. After (three, five) days, reward the
two children for compliance.

·Encourage
the anger-prone and/or acting-out child to “stay one step ahead of the
problem.” Predict when anger and/or acting-out episodes are more likely to
happen, and plan for dealing with
those moments, including identifying the strategies that the child will use to
cope.

Explicitly
discuss with the anger-prone child when and
how she can use these informal coping
strategies, and reward her each time she uses a strategy to cope with angry
feelings and/or acting-out behaviors.

Thinking, Feeling, and Behaving: A Cognitive-Emotive Model to Get Children to Control their Behavior. To preview this book on Amazon, click here.

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Introducing "The Psycho-Educational Teacher"

Psycho-education is an enhanced behavior management approach based on the principle that, no matter how severe a behavior problem is, all children can grow socio-emotionally and can learn how to self-control behavior. Psycho-educational teachers believe that socio-emotional growth takes place when children understand the role that emotions play in their school difficulties. This therapeutic approach aims at helping children understand how their troubling feelings and emotions influence their behavior. A teacher trained in psycho-education applies skilled child guidance techniques to help children develop effective coping strategies, self-control of behavior, and social problem-solving skills. Psycho-educational principles and techniques include cognitive (thinking), affective (feelings), and behavioral aspects. This innovative blog is a must read for teachers, counselors, administrators, and parents with an interest in psycho-educational theory and methods to help children with recurrent behavior problems.